G-quadruplexes are hyper-stable secondary structures formed in guanine rich nucleotide sequences. They play a role as antiviral agents, among several other functions. Recently, a genome wide analysis was conducted by Zhang et al. (link to the paper is mentioned below) on the SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative-sense viral RNA strands. 24 potential G-quadruplexes were confirmed to exist within the viral genome, 15 of them on the positive-sense strand and 9 on the negative. The team of scientists from Southeast University, China, discovered that most of the structures were located in non-structural proteins and the remaining in spike and membrane proteins. Fascinatingly, the identified G-quadruplexes share structural similarity with ones found in the human transcriptome, both containing comparable ratios of 2-quartet structures. This discovery can pave way for the use of G-quadruplexes as a target in anti-viral drug discovery!
Read more at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.06.05.135749
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